No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS— APPENDIX. 281 



and even the droppings of horses with the water of rains. 

 The road must " clean itself," as Telford said. There ought 

 to be material for several years' friction on top of the per- 

 fection of a good country road, and thoughtful people must 

 agree to that or roads will be made half worn-out to begin 

 with. Society has other urgent cares, and can't be always 

 making temporary roads. 



A simple method of constructing an excellent cross-walk 

 of very pebbly gravel, or small crushed rock, over stone, 

 gravel or earth roads, is shown here, because it is often 

 cheaper and much easier to get done than stone pavement ; 

 less likely to jolt vehicles, and can be built or amended by 

 the road maker or private parties. 



Let us first sketch the way broad slabs of granite are apt 

 to work in a muddy street, when the women folks have 

 dunned the men Ions enough to set them laid : — 



First, the slab of granite settles a little under the banging 

 it gets from teams, but no census reporter tells how many 

 millions of jolted people, broken eggs, wagon springs, and 

 commandments are spent on those abrupt corners, which are 

 most felt in the stomach when they strike the traveller una- 

 wares in a muddy time. Nothing rounds them, however, 

 but horse shoes, wheels and sleigh runners, — a slow process. 

 And, when the road is next mended, the slabs are buried 

 with care, which brings us to the second and "shallow 

 mud " stage of the cross walk. Having experienced those 

 slabs itself, the village improvement society is slow to raise 

 them again, and the road-mender, made and provided, is 

 not the man to have crow-bars, water-level, stone chisels, 

 hammers, and loads of sand with him when he is mending 

 roads, to raise those slabs above grade, and knock the cor- 

 ners off. So the next time he comes along he raises the 

 road and leaves the cross walk in the third and ' ' deep-mud 

 stages." _ 



It is but fair to add that two or three parallel slabs of 

 granite, a foot wide, with foot intervals of pebble pavement, 



